


selcouth

by hollow_city



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Fireworks, Fourth of July, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, One Shot, Post-Season/Series 02, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, This Is STUPID
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-22 19:18:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11386683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollow_city/pseuds/hollow_city
Summary: strange, unusual, and unfamiliar, yet marvelous and wondrous.or, bart has never seen fireworks before.





	selcouth

**Author's Note:**

> idk man i went to see the fourth of july fireworks and then this happened

When the Team finds out that Bart has never seen fireworks, they are sadly unsurprised. In fact, the speedster doesn't even know what a firework is. 

"Fire... work? This is some kind of olden days lingo that I'm missing out on, isn't it?" Bart questions, eyeing Gar suspiciously. The younger boy snickers and shakes his head. 

"No, man, it's something people use on the Fourth of July," he explains further, but it only strengthens Bart's confusion.

His eyebrows furrow further. "But... why? That sounds wicked dangerous."

Dick makes his appearance, wearing a hat and holding a pair of sunglasses in his hand. Bart doesn't quite understand why he feels the need to do that, considering everyone who is going to these "fireworks" knows who he is, but he doesn't question it either. 

"It can be if you don't handle them right, but these are safe," he says, adjusting his hat and crossing his arms. 

This excursion hadn't been his idea, but Batman insisted he come along. The first time Gar pitched the idea, he'd wanted it to be a Team thing with everybody tagging along. But as he asked around, people had to turn it down. Kaldur, Artemis, Cassie and Barbara all have prior commitments to attend to. That leaves Bart, Jaime, Tim, Conner, Gar, and M'gann, and for  _some reason_ , Batman doesn't trust them to be unsupervised, so he insisted Dick go along. When they came to the conclusion that their identities were no secret amongst those going, they decided to swap it from being a  _Team_ thing to a  _friends_ thing. 

"Okay, when are we leaving, then?" Bart leaves behind his curiosity for his usual jittering and impatience.

"As soon as the others get here," Dick replies, the lifting of the corner of his mouth the only indication that he's amused. 

Soon after he says this, a frantic M'gann enters the room, who is shifting between different outfits. She doesn't wear what she used to when she would shift to look more like a human, because even though she is not as old as she pretends to be, she likes to make herself look like she is, and she wants to look like a powerful young woman. She ends up in a strappy sundress and follows it up with making her skin pink once more.

"Tim and Conner are in the hallway," she tells Dick, her eyes twinkling. The man stares at her for a moment, before his eyes narrow into a quite intimidating glare and he slowly makes his way out into the hallway. 

A loud cough followed by a thud is heard and Dick reappears, a protective arm around his younger brother's shoulders and Conner trailing behind looking both annoyed and thoroughly chastised. 

"Are we ready, then?" Dick asks, acting as if none of the previous events have just happened. Tim attempts to pull away from his brother's grasp, but only finds himself in a tighter grip.

But Bart isn't ready to leave yet. "Wait! Jaime's not here yet."

Not even a few seconds later, said boy comes rocketing through the doorway, a look of panic written across his face. 

"Sorry, sorry, running late, I know," he rambles, skidding to a stop beside Bart and turning his nervous gaze on Dick. The man doesn't say anything and simply sighs, before letting Tim go and gesturing towards the door. 

"Let's go then," he says, "before we miss the fireworks entirely." 

 

By the time they do get there, they've had three incidents, two including Gar nearly straying into traffic and one including M'gann and Conner playfully nudging each other which ended in Conner knocking over some poor fellow's mailbox by mistake and frantically trying to fix it before giving up completely and shuffling away quickly. 

The park is in sight soon enough, much to Dick's relief, as a headache is just beginning to manifest, and he's not sure how much longer he'd be able to tolerate Gar and Tim's banter. 

"Anybody care where we sit?" he asks, sticking his arm out between Tim and Conner without looking before the two can stray too close to each other. They have plenty of time to be together, but whenever Dick is around, he turns into the hyper-protective older brother. 

After a chorus of  _no's_ and  _not really's,_ they all sit in a clump on the grass between a family of four and a group of teenagers. When any of them turn to stare at the Team's resident green boy, they receive such vicious glares that they turn away almost immediately. While M'gann can hide her usual skin color from the world, Gar does not have that option and has learned to live with it. He covers what skin he can when he wants, but most times, he doesn't bother. What good would it do? 

"So... anyone wanna explain what fireworks are?" Bart asks from his spot sprawled across the grass. His head is in Jaime's lap and his foot is in Tim's and he's lounging like he's completely at home in the middle of the noisy and crowded park.

"Just wait, cariño, you'll see," Jaime tells him as if that answers all of his questions, and Bart glares up at the older boy's chin. He pulls his foot from Tim's lap and sits up, surveying the area.

The people around them have set up chairs and put blankets on the grass to sit on, and they're all facing the bottom of the hill, so he assumes what they're waiting for comes from down there. A few police officers are standing here and there, for what, Bart isn't sure, but it makes him nervous. Why do they need to be there? Are these "fireworks" that dangerous?

"The fireworks should be beginning soon. They are supposed to go off at ten, and it is almost ten," M'gann tells them, and Bart is only more confused. 

It is a scheduled thing that they are waiting for, that can only be done at night, that requires the attention of the police. This is beginning to sound more and more like something they shouldn't be doing. But then again, all of these people are here, so it must be fine,  _right?_

Bart lets out a quiet breath of resignation and slumps against Jaime's arm, tired of trying to understand these strange traditions of the past. They didn't have things like this where he comes from, and he can only begin to understand so much.

But soon enough, he finds out what exactly it is they had been waiting for. He hears a distant thud, followed by a whistling noise, and his head turns so fast that if he wasn't a speedster, he may have genuinely hurt himself. His eyes blow wide and his muscles seize. To anyone around him, he just looks like he twitched, but it's actually more like an aborted duck-and-cover movement that he does on instinct. That sound never meant good things where he's from, and his chest tightens with panic.

His teammates don't notice the aborted movement, but Jaime does notice the sudden look of sheer panic and fear on his face.

The fear only deepens when the whistling cuts off and explodes in a deafening crack. Air rushes into Bart's lungs in a gasp and he wants to turn away from the sight in front of him because this is not okay,  _why are they doing this?_

M'gann is awed by the sight in front of them and is smiling, and Bart cannot for the life of him understand  _why._ The sky is fucking exploding and she is  _smiling_! He must be missing something, he thinks, because where he's from, when this kind of thing happens, you duck for cover and pull whoever you can reach with you. You don't wait and watch it like a sitting duck. 

"Wegottago, ohgod, whatthehellareyouguysdoing?" Bart blurts out, and that's when they finally notice that something is wrong. Dick turns immediately, worry evident on the parts of his face that they can see, and M'gann's hands cover her mouth in guilt. 

"Oh, Bart, no, these are the fireworks! They aren't going to hurt anyone, I promise!" she tells him, reaching out and taking his hand in hers. He wants nothing more than to yank her towards him and shove her underneath his body to protect her from what  _should_ be nothing but trouble, if his memory serves him right. He doesn't, though. 

" _These_ are the fireworks?" he parrots, his heart rate steadying now that he's safely tucked in Jaime's arms and M'ganns kind face is hovering in the middle of his vision. "B-But..."

Dick cuts in, his protective brotherly instincts kicking in. "They're just for show, Bart, they aren't dangerous." 

When he sees the weird looks people around them are giving him, the speedster nods quickly and curls in on himself, trying hard to understand why they would want to do this for fun. 

Another firework shoots into the sky, and he works to keep his muscles relaxed and instead watches the explosion turn bright red and blue, spidering out across the sky. It takes a few more fireworks for him to understand, and when he finally gets used to the noise, he relaxes further and leans his head back against Jaime's shoulder to watch them.

His favorites are the ones that crackle and fizz and turn gold as they puff out. 

He finally tears his eyes away from the sparkling display above him and turns his head slightly to look up at Jaime, who only has eyes for the exploding colors. Each firework lights up his face in all the right ways, and Bart takes a moment to simply watch.

And when he turns back to watch the bright lights and explosions, he understands just a little better. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> um it's past three and i'm tired. there could be some horrific grammatical mistakes and spelling errors but i will weed them out another day. i don't even know what this was supposed to be. i really have no idea.


End file.
